When China's Earth Roared

Simsbury Native, Wife Survive Catastrophe

John Bergen heard the earth roar Monday afternoon outside his sixth-floor apartment window in Dujiangyan, a city in western China. It sounded like a train coming over the mountainous terrain.

The Simsbury native had returned from teaching English at Sichuan Technology & Business College when he felt the ground heave. The refrigerator jumped off the wall and landed near the door of his campus housing.

Bergen, 48, put on his motorcycle helmet and stood in a steel-framed doorway. He hoped for the best while his wife, Qui Yue, 42, fled down the stairs.

"The building swayed 3, 4 feet in both directions," Bergen said Wednesday by telephone from a hotel where they found refuge in the city of Chengdu, about 60 miles from campus. "It's indescribable, like nothing I've ever seen or heard."

The Bergens survived the 7.9 earthquake in Sichuan Province. The death toll had reached almost 15,000 Wednesday and was expected to climb as relief operations spread into the mountains.

The Bergens' building somehow stayed aloft in a city - just 10 miles from the epicenter - that's endured almost unbearable horror.

Hundreds of schoolchildren lay crushed beneath loose bricks and concrete. As many as 900 children died in one school collapse in a southern suburb. A pregnant woman was pulled to safety after spending 50 hours trapped under debris.

At the business college, where Bergen has taught since last year, 16 students died in dormitories that collapsed and two or three more were killed by falling debris, Bergen said.

"The suffering is catastrophic - the children who lost their lives, the parents looking for children," Bergen said. "The earthquake wiped out an area the size of New England."

Bergen grew up in Simsbury - where his mother, Janith, still lives - and worked in Connecticut as an explosives engineer until January 2007.

"I have shaken the ground myself," Bergen said. "This was a hundred times more powerful. For 90 seconds there was just this violent, unbelievable shaking. The TV, the computer, the furniture was all smashed. We've lost everything."

Nearly 26,000 people remained buried in collapsed buildings Wednesday. The quake triggered landslides that blocked roads to the hardest-hit areas as hundreds of Chinese soldiers marched through mud and debris to mountain towns and army helicopters began airdrops of food and medicine.

Bergen said he wants to return to Dujiangyan and help rebuild the school. He said 70 percent of the school's buildings either collapsed or were left structurally unsound. He said he hopes to find corporations and friends from Connecticut to assist.

"I chose this town because it's a very quaint, tourist-friendly place," he said. "The people here are unbelievably hard-working. They love Americans. I hope we can tap some of that Yankee ingenuity to help out."

Bergen, who graduated from The Master's School in Simsbury, broke his back while skiing a few years ago. He met his wife while searching online for "trial Chinese medications" to ease his pain. They struck up a friendship, viewed each other through Web cams, and decided to get married and live in China, where he picked up a teaching degree.

Traveling by motorcycle, Bergen and his wife made their way to Chengdu on back roads Tuesday after spending Monday night on a soccer field in the center of the rain-drenched campus.

Bergen said he didn't fear for his life during the quake.

"I just stood there watching," he said. "I was just awe-struck by the energy released by the quake. I watched buildings pancake around me but I had a sense of calm. I guess I'm an extremely lucky human being."